Milla’s Macarons Appears in Metro Atlanta With Macaron Ice Cream Sandwiches
“It was the best thing I ever ate,” she said of the French confection. “I was obsessed with it, and there was nothing like it in Atlanta at the time. I decided I was going to figure out how to make them, but they really gave me a hard time. But once I got it, I was like, “This is my niche.” This is exactly what I was looking for.'”
In 2017, she launched the pop-up Milla’s Macarons (instagram.com/millasmacarons), named after her now 12-year-old daughter. She has since appeared at events like the Atlanta Dessert Festival and at local businesses including Tan-Cha in Doraville and Nom Station in Marietta.
Credit: Courtesy of Milla’s Macarons
Credit: Courtesy of Milla’s Macarons
“There are only four ingredients, so I thought, ‘How hard could this be?'” she said. “I dove in without any idea. It’s not just about ingredients, it’s about technique. They are very capricious and depend on humidity, temperature and type of oven. If you mix too much by one fold, you might as well throw out the entire batch. This requires a lot of patience.
It has developed popularity for its macaron ice cream sandwiches, as well as dacquoise, a French dessert cake filled with meringue; bombolini, an Italian donut filled with cream; and a Vietnamese flan cake.
Many of its flavors are inspired by its heritage. Her parents both grew up in Cambodia. Her father is Chinese and her mother is Vietnamese and ran a specialty catering business in Vietnamese pastries.
Giang’s signature sandwiches include ube ice cream with an ube shell; Vietnamese coffee macaron and ice cream made from condensed milk; and brown sugar boba, with brown sugar ice cream and house-made boba pearls.
In addition to his day job as a web developer and his baking business, Giang also runs the Karly Eats culinary Instagram account (instagram.com/karlyeats) and the ATL Asian Eats Facebook page to support Asian businesses in the Atlanta metro area that have become almost 40,000 subscribers. She’s content to operate Milla’s Macarons as a pop-up, although she said she would be open to a brick-and-mortar store if the right opportunity presented itself. And she continues to draw inspiration from the pop-up’s namesake.
“My daughter is the heart and soul of the company,” she said. “She is my inspiration and my quality assurance. His palace is so pure, and it’s amazing what she can understand when I don’t.
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